2017 BWRC Conference: Moving Goods and People to, from, and along the Brooklyn Waterfront with Keynote Speaker Congressman Jerrold Nadler

In the mid-twentieth century, before its decades’ long decline, the Brooklyn waterfront buzzed with the movement of ships and trains and trucks and trolleys and people. The goods that moved to and fro along the waterfront came from around the world, but many, if not most of the workers moving along the same waterfront came from adjacent neighborhoods – Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Vinegar Hill, Sunset Park, and Red Hook. Many of those workers walked to job sites at large warehouse and factory complexes at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Bush Terminal, the Domino Sugar processing complex, and the Brooklyn Army Terminal. The workers serviced ships, moved goods, processed coffee, and sugar and worked in manufacturing.

There was much less movement along the Brooklyn waterfront in the latter part of the twentieth century as first the shipping industry and then other industries moved, taking jobs and many of the workers with them. After more than a generation, the Brooklyn waterfront is moving once again, but it is a different kind of movement and for different reasons. There are now and soon will be more residents of high-rise towers in neighborhoods that were formerly characterized by low-rise tenements, brownstones, and high-rise public housing. There is still a Navy Yard, Bush Terminal (now Industry City), and Brooklyn Army Terminal, but no Domino Sugar plant. There are scores of thousands of tourists visiting sites along the Brooklyn waterfront. What is left of the transportation infrastructure is overtaxed and insufficient to accommodate the needs for moving along the Brooklyn waterfront.

This joint, full day conference, sponsored by BWRC and the University Transportation Research Center, has as its goal as comprehensive a conversation as we can about the transportation needs of the communities, businesses, and visitors along the Brooklyn waterfront. Some of the questions that will be asked are: Have those needs been studied? Who are the community-based actors working on these issues and what are they saying? How are city, state, and local officials planning to address the issues? There are many means of transportation and transportation infrastructures in place or proposed: subways, barges, buses, trucks, ferries, private shuttles, freight rails, the Brooklyn Greenway, bicycles, a light rail system, car sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, and even a gondola to replace the L line. Are, or could, these systems be sufficient to meet the needs? Trying to answer these and other transportation questions will be our keynote lunch speaker, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, representatives of maritime industries, elected and appointed officials, representatives from waterfront communities, developers of residential, commercial, and industrial properties, and transportation scholars.